‘_July_ 12. _Great Eastern_.—Here as I write we run our last course for the buoy at the St. Pierre shore end. It blows and lightens, and our good ship rolls, and buoys are hard to find; but we must soon now finish our work, and then this letter will start for home. . . . Yesterday we were mournfully groping our way through the wet grey fog, not at all sure where we were, with one consort lost and the other faintly answering the roar of our great whistle through the mist. As to the ship which was to meet us, and pioneer us up the deep channel, we did not know if we should come within twenty miles of her; when suddenly up went the fog, out came the sun, and there, straight ahead, was the _Wm. Cory_, our pioneer, and a little dancing boat, the _Gulnare_, sending signals of welcome with many-coloured flags. Since then we have been steaming in a grand procession; but now at 2 A.M. the fog has fallen, and the great roaring whistle calls up the distant answering notes all around us. Shall we, or shall we not find the buoy?
‘_July_ 13.—All yesterday we lay in the damp dripping fog, with whistles all round and guns firing so that we might not bump up against one another. This little delay has let us get our reports into tolerable order. We are now at 7 o’clock getting the cable end again, with the main cable buoy close to us.’
_A telegram of July_ 20: ‘I have received your four welcome letters. The Americans are charming people.’
And here to make an end are a few random bits about the cruise to Pernambuco:—
‘_Plymouth_, _June_ 21, 1873.—I have been down to the sea-shore and smelt the salt sea and like it; and I have seen the _Hooper_ pointing her great bow sea-ward, while light smoke rises from her funnels telling that the fires are being lighted; and sorry as I am to be without you, something inside me answers to the call to be off and doing.
‘_Lalla Rookh_. _Plymouth_, _June_ 22.—We have been a little cruise in the yacht over to the Eddystone lighthouse, and my sea-legs seem very well on. Strange how alike all these starts are—first on shore, steaming hot days with a smell of bone-dust and tar and salt water; then the little puffing, panting steam-launch that bustles out across a port with green woody sides, little yachts sliding about, men-of-war training-ships, and then a great big black hulk of a thing with a mass of smaller vessels sticking to it like parasites; and that is one’s home being coaled. Then comes the Champagne lunch where everyone says all that is polite to everyone else, and then the uncertainty when to start. So far as we know _now_, we are to start to-morrow morning at daybreak; letters that come later are to be sent to Pernambuco by first mail. . . . My father has sent me the heartiest sort of Jack Tar’s cheer.